Axioms and their role in psychology.

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J. R. Kantor

Abstract

It is the theme of this article that the scientifically valuable insight that axioms ase assumptions requieres elaboration and extension. Axioms as the behavior or behavioral products of scientists, logicians, and mathematicians are points on a behavioral continuum along with reflecting, wishing, guessing, asid believing. Accordingly the entire enterprise o” science including choice of events studied, hypothesizing, research planning, investigat­ing, postulating, asid law formulating are in origin and operation assumptionable.

Axioms it follows, then, are not merely the bases of local systems of knowledge as in geometry but one type of specific assumptional factors in interbehavioral fields. Afl scien­tille systems consist of the activities of individuals or groups while observing and describ­ing events of interest to them. All of dic factors are subject to evaluation as to their fidelity to observed events, in brief a criterion whether assumptions are naturalistic as der­ived from events or nonnaturalistic as derived from traditional sources.

lii this article the functions and operations of axioms and other assumptional factors are assessed with direct reference to the discipline of psychology. Attention ja focused upon the early shift from the axioms derived from observations of psychological behav­ior to the religio-cultural, artifactual assumptions of soul, mmd, and consciousness. It is suggested that today a reconstructed theory of axioms and other assumptions distilled from the observation of actual scientific work will serve to make psychology a veritable science with advantages for general theory and many sorts of practical confrontations with normal asid deviant conduct.

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How to Cite
Kantor, J. R. (2011). Axioms and their role in psychology. Mexican Journal of Behavior Analysis, 7(1), 5–11. https://doi.org/10.5514/rmac.v7.i1.23703